Love is a Battlefield/Voice of Dissent/An Apology

Ok, so maybe meeting Todd Bertuzzi, while awesome, was not the greatest give Calgary ever gave me. I apologize to anyone's feelings that may have been hurt by me saying that meeting Todd Bertuzzi was the greatest gift Calgary had ever given me.

I am at the Edge (the youth center i run) and was just listening to the song "Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benatar. It's an awesome song - so i wanted to refer to it in my blog title.

Voice of Dissent. I just returned from my denominational district conference. The truth is - God - through his word - and through various people and situations have been convicting me in the area of negativity/hopelessness. I am by nature, more inclined to see the negative. I am more inclined to think something will fail then to think it will be a sucess. I don't think that is a Christ-like characteristic. Although I don't want to fit Christ into a picture of a ceo-leader type person - i don't see him as a hopeless person, and i think that his teaching, and subsequent teaching he inspires (i'm not going to clarify that) doesn't recognize negativity and hopelessness as hallmarks of Jesus either.

I've decided that i don't want to hopeless. And my problem is and has always been in this area - putting my hope into things that can't handle my hope. Whether it be structure, or leaders, or myself or whatever - there is nothing worthy or capable of giving and sustaining, and fulfilling hope then Jesus Christ. Whenever i put my hope in these other things, they let me down, and disappointment follows. Then this nagativity creeps into other areas of my life.

Very often, when it comes to areas of submitting to even agreeing to the leadership of people above me - i put myself into a little group of people who feel marginalized and dissassociated from where the leadership is going or telling me to go. This shouldn't be my natural inclination. I'm not saying that i should agree with everything - but i'm saying that my natural inclination should not be to disregard and damn-slam whatever it is being sent my way. I shouldn't assume because it comes from someone above me that it's terrible.

I think my tension needs to exist in hope in Christ - not in anything else, and being able to listen and speak critically - though not with a critical spirit, and also not to lose hope. Not that my hope should be in anything other then Jesus - but i should allow Jesus to give me hope in the other areas of my life - not to sound compartmentalized.

I want to being a voice of truth, spoken in love - with hope that good things can and will happen in the future - not because all the old people will be put out to pasture and then all my friends and i will get to run the show - but because Christ will move....

Sorry if this doesn't all make sense - my mind is all over the place today.